Trailer
GENRE
GENRE
The horror genre has a lot of very strong conventions. We did a lot
research in these, by looking at lots and lots of different trailers and
focusing on different aspects of different things we liked;. We were inspired
by what we looked at and saw many things we wanted to include in our
trailer.There are many different aspects and techniques in horror film trailers
that are unique to the horror genre, such the narrative structure, editing,
lighting and colour, sound, graphics, film title, etc. We wanted our trailer to
be of quite a classic horror film, so following a lot of horror conventions.
However, we still wanted to break and challenge some. For example, typically in
horror films, the female lead is quite sexualised and made to be weak and
ditsy. However in our film the female lead is meant to be the stronger one and
we had her covered up and wearing tough looking clothes, such as her leather
jacket. Our horror film is a bit of a psychological thriller, as the fear is
created by the mental, emotional and psychological status of
characters to frighten or unsettle viewers.
LIGHTING+COLOUR
Lighting
and colours is a very big feature of the horror genre
particularly. Shadows are often used to create fear, as they can
create a very unsettling environment as the viewer doesn't know what could be
lingering in the darkness. Colour is also very effective for creating mood and
tone. The lighting and colour of our trailer, coincides with the narrative of
the film. The trailer opens on a very bright shot with lots of light. It stays
light until they reach the house. However when the first enter the house it is
very dark, symbolising and suggesting the dark intentions of the house. There
is quite a lot of changing from dark to light and light to dark in the first
act, e.g. the male walks into a dark room and turns on a light. This gives the
feeling of things changing around and suggests a disruption of the equilibrium.
There is also a use of shadows, e.g. when there the two leads are trying to
light the candle and a shadowed figure walks behind the blind. Around act 2, a
very large majority of the shots are quite dark. This enhances the feeling of
increasing fear. Then at act 3 is a big mix of different lighting and colour in
the different shots. This is because it is the montage, which is meant to be a
big mix of many different scenes, so its fitting that all the scenes look very
different.
SOUND
For our
trailer we put a lot of effort into our sound. By looking at other relevant
trailers, we realised how much suspense, tension and storytelling is developed
through sound. The sound track was created to fit with the three act narrative
of the trailer. It starts of slow and eerie, and then builds up in tension,
when more and scary things are happening and being seen in the house. The
development of pace corresponds with the increase of fear provoking things
happening. Then finally when the montage starts, there is a very sudden
increase in speed and drama. This makes the montage seem more frightening and
more hectic as it makes it feel like everything is building up and happening
all at once. Sound effects were also very key in our trailer. They are
particular effective, we think, when they are put in when any narrative
graphics or the title is put in. We added a loud booming sound effect as it was
what we felt was most dramatic and it was important to put something like that
in because otherwise, the narrative graphics would cause a drop in the tension
as it is a fairly large space of time with not much happening. We added sound
effects for about everything we could for diegetic sounds, e.g. the rattling of
the gate and the dropping of the plate. This means we could enhance the sounds
louder then we could if we used the actual sound we recorded. It is a
convention of horror film trailers to increase even the diegetic sounds. This
creates drama and is more engaging for the audience than quieter sound effects.
We used some speech to help with the narrative of the story and express the
characters fear and panic. However, we used less speech than most horror film
trailers. We thought this made the trailer feel more isolated and eerie as it
makes the house feel more empty the characters more alone.
GRAPHICS
We wanted
our graphics to suggest something about the trailer, but not give anything
away. Our graphics are successful in this as they sort of add another element
to the story as they have flesh in as the main feature of the background and
the body parts are hanging limp and are in dark lighting, this creates enigma
and connotes it being a dead body. This sort of adds another element or
storyline that isn’t shown in the rest of trailer. This means they add to the
story, without revelling anything. It using conventions of horror narrative
graphics as in horror films the narrative graphics are usually on a very dark
(mostly) black background. The text is usually quite small on the screen, but
obviously big enough to read. The font is usually very contrasting to the
background and very bright and (almost) white. The main influence for graphics
came from the trailer to the film ‘The conjuring 2’, and the opening graphics
to the TV show ‘Trapped’, which is where we got the idea of using skin for our
opening. We liked how it was haunting, but also beautiful and sets the tone of
a more artistic film. Our final narrative graphics are a combination of the two
inspirations as there is the use of skin, but we used similar colours, font and
use of big expansive background.
FILM TITLE
‘The
Conjuring 2’ and ‘The Village’ are is our main to inspirations for creating the
title. The Key themes that we found while researching film titles are the text
all being in capital letters. There is a very clear trend of the use of
chiaroscuro. There are a lot of dark backgrounds with the title being slightly
lit up, and reflecting light to make it emerge from the dark, gloomy
background.
Another
theme with these titles is that they all have an imperfect look. This is done
through the text or background being scratched, dirty, scratched, faded etc.
This gives an old and dirty look and is conventional of horror films. It is
effective as old stuff is associated as creepy. A clean look would look to
innocent and pure. Our text has a slight old and crumbly look to suit these
conventions.
Another
theme is the font used. They are similar to the 'Times New Roman' font, but are
variations of it just similar and are mostly serif fonts. Ours is a serif font,
which looks old traditional font so goes well with the old styling. It isn’t
too simple and blocky, but at the same time it isn’t too detailed and complex
which would make it difficult to read quickly which is important in the title
of a trailer. Another theme within text, we stuck to is allthe text being in
capital letters, like in our two main inspirations. We looked the branches
element of ‘The Village’, because we liked how they are a little bit abstract
and create a beautiful but haunting image. Also trees can be seen as quite
unnerving as they are associated with things like witches and woods (which can
also been seen as scary and isolating, and are conventional in horror films).
We also like the use of the vignette to create a eerie effect which feels like
it’s kind of closing in.
LOCATION
Location
in horror films are very key to horror films. A key theme of the location it is
very isolating. In our trailer our location is very good for this as it is in a
massive house, which feels more isolating than a small house. It also feels
very isolating as the house stands alone as it isn’t connected to another house.
Also, a smaller house would give the impression of the home owners having more
control as they only have a small space to take care of and will be more aware
of what’s in it, so a big house, gives the feeling that anything could be in
there. This is a very chilling idea, so the house we used was a very good
location emphasizes horror film conventions. It is also an old house, with a
slight gothic style to it. It is conventional for horror films to use an older house,
rather than a modern one. As well as the house we also had some scenes filmed
on the street, in a wasteland and in a disused shed we found in the wasteland.
We used shots from these locations more towards the end of the trailer to show progression
in the story line. We also like the effect of the cold, urban and concrete
landscape. We think this modernises the film and also breaks conventions as
that is not often seen in horror films.
EDITING
Trailers
have a lot of key themes editing wise and so do horror trailers in particular. We
used the ideas of the three acts in our trailer and we used editing to
disguinish these three a
Horror films have a style of editing that try
to emphasize themes of the film such as isolation, this can be done with a wide
angle shot making the character look small or a high angle shot to make them
weak. The shot of the lady sitting of the sofa, seen through the
reflection emphasizes her isolation, making her look alone and timid. In the
shot where ‘Frank’ crawls on the floor he is shot in high angle to make him
look weaker. These conventions can be applied simply to give the film a better
horror style. In the opening to ‘Halloween’ we see a long drawn out scene from
the point of view of something voyeuristically watching, this creates a sense
of unease with the shaky cam emphasizing the rawness and reality. This can be
seen expressed in our trailer at the looking into the house scene and greater
in the montage crossover shot, watching them sleep.
Editing
also allows us to create an overarching narrative, this is important in a trailer
as we only have a short time to create a representation of the film. It is
important to create an expanding rthym of tension that culminates at the
montage to fully engage the audience, in our trailer we tried to edit it in a
way that stuck to the three act structure whilst also developing the story. For
instance trying to keep movement between cuts and carry tension and emotion.
CHARACTERS
Chracters
in horror films are quite important as they help move the narrative along, they
are essentially what the movie relies on either through the heros, the villains
and everything inbetween. In ‘The Conjuring 2’ the story revolves around the
main characters, the fact they are excorcists drving the whole plot, in ‘The
Babadook’ it is the creature that begins haunting them that engages the story.
In our film we have a fusing of both the villains and heros starting the sotry,
the heros by moving in and the villains for attaking. The charactrs are the
main point of interaction with the film, the audience looks for links of
personal identity and relationship, in our trailer the two main characters are
not overly esoteric meaning they can be easily related to gender respective.
This sense of identification allows the audience to become more involved in the
film as they can start to feel more personal motivations similar to the
characters, the relationship creates a talking point and allows the audience to
actively think about what is occurring and what might occur. Through
the characters is how we experience the film.
STRUCTURE
+ NARRATIVE
In our
trailer there are a few narrative codes that could be applied, most notably the
enigma and action codes although the other codes apply in ways. The action code
is very prominent in horror films, they create adrenaline in the film and help
invigorate films that can tend to get slow and sleepy when just relying on
fear. In our trailer we have multiple scenes of action, showing mostly in the
third act of the montage. These scenes of action entice bviewers and show the
film is not juist creepy but also thrilling, as we learnt from our research
this appeals to both genders with a slight male bias. The enigma code is also
heavily used in our trailer, a lot of questions are brought up that are not
answered in the trailer such as ‘Who are the couple why are they there?’ and
‘How are the neighbours, what are their motives?’ . Enigma is used to engage
the audience more in the story and to get them consciously thinking about the
story line, in a trailer this is useful to create a sense of curiosity in the
audience and encouraging to watch the full film, as opposed to showing a
showcase of scenes from the film. These codes are present in Films like ‘The
Shining’ a lot of mystery iscreated from the scenes, in ‘The Conjuring 2’ a lot
of information is presented in the trailer, because of its sshort nature the
scenes that are shown are to engage the viewers and make them think.
The
structure of our trailer takes 3 acts, the first act states and cements the
equilibrium, the second disrupts it and the third is the montage. This is used
to show the shift of danger in the trailer and the disintegration of safety.
This is a common convention of trailer structure and can be seen in trailers
like ‘The Strangers’ or ‘The Babadook’.
Ancillary texts
Poster
My poster follows the conventions of other traditional
horror film posters as the central image of my poster is a hand, and it is very
common for horror film posters to contain some type of human form, whether it
be a leg, a face, a doll, an eye or a dark figure. Flesh and humans can be
edited and presented very creepily, and make the poster feel more personal.
I found that typically the title goes nearer the bottom of
the poster. I much prefer this look compared to the text being at the top as it
has a much powerful effect (which it should do as it makes it more memorable so
more people will see it). I think it is more powerful as the eye naturally
starts at the top of a poster and scans down, so if it’s at the bottom, then
the eye ends there and lingers more on it.
The main colour scheme of my poster is red, black and
purple. The colours red and black are very conventional of horror posters and
are two colour that are very often parried together to give a feeling of fear
and its very strongly associated with the horror genre. Black is a scary as it
has a lot of a bad associations, such as, darkness, evil, being
trapped/isolated etc. Red also connotes horror film like feelings as it has
associations with danger, blood and the devil. Although I like the use of just
red and black colouring, I decided that I would break that convention and use
some purple as well. Purple is another colour that is associated with horror
and fear, for example it is often used in Halloween imagery. The use of purple means that the poster will
stand out more than all the horror film posters with just dark/black writing
and red detailing.
Another convention of horror film posters is the use of
texture, especially the textures of floors and walls. This enhances the
dirtiness of the area, giving it a creepy, abandoned feel. My poster has the
texture of the bricks as a background, so follows this convention. However, I
flattened the image of bricks a bit so the rough textured hand stands out more
because of the contrast of textures. I also think this makes it look more
modern as it has a slight retro feel as often in more old fashioned posters,
the images are more flat and graphic. So although the rest of my poster feels
modern, the background has a slight retro feel.
Another convention is editing the colour and texture of human
skin. If there is any aspect of human in a horror film poster, it is usually
made to look less human and/or diseased looking. This makes it look much more fighting
as disease is scary to humans so is something that’s human, but not normal.
There is a lot of symbolism in my poster. I think it is
effective to use symbolism that links to the film the poster is from as it gives
a taster for the film, and creates a more ‘clever’ image. It is conventional
for horror film posters to strongly suggest what the film is about, especially
compared to other genres such as thriller posters, where they are usually of
one or two main characters pointing a gun. This gives away very little
information about the film. The central image of my poster is a hand holding
onto a small model I made of the house that features in the film. As the central image depicts the house being
in the hand of someone, it connotes the house being in something/someone else’s
power. This goes with the plot of the film as the house is out of the
people-living-there’s power. The fact the model looks like a little toy house,
adds to this as it suggests that the house is being played with. Also it is a
convention of horror films to use toys and other child related objects, because
they can be seen as creepy. Another symbolism in my poster is the picture of
the hand, physically comes in between and separates the two lead actors that I
placed at the top. This, and the fact the actors are facing away from each
other, is a metaphor for the happenings of the film tearing the characters
apart and it shows there tension and the rift created by moving into the new
house and the presences of the neighbours. So does the fact they are facing
away from each other. The veins on the poster make the overall effect of the
poster more gory and creepy. However, as they touch the house and run into the
title, the idea of the ‘UNKNOWN’ is running through the blood of the arm, and
presents a connection.
Another convention is to have the stars of the film on the
poster. It is also conventional of films in general to have perfected faces, so
I smoothed out their skin, removing their spots and blemishes on Photoshop. I
also darken Kalyani’s lips gave Artem a bit of stubble, to make him seem older.
I chose the font I chose for the title because it looked a
little vein like so it the veins I drew flow well into it and it enhances the
effect of the veins as it gives a creepy, gory look. They also give more of a
reason for the veins to be there and means that they don’t need to awkwardly
stop as they have somewhere to go.
Magazine
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